My Life and Dreams

Monday, February 3, 2020

August 20, 2015- Friends

We didn’t get to see Cindy and Jessica that much because they lived in PA so it was more of a pen-pal and holiday/summer vacation friendship. We did have a lot of fun though. Our dads took us to Sandy Hook once. My brother sometimes jokes around with me that their Dad looks a little like James Garner.

Maybe some people would think that we were weird for enjoying playing school. I was Jessica’s teacher and Cindy was Mike's.

Cindy had a Rick Springfield album, Working Class Dog. We were listening to it in her grandparent’s basement one day.

We would sometimes play a game that she called Crack the 8 ball on her grandfather’s pool table down there. I don’t really remember the rules that we made up for this. We also played croquet in their grandparent’s yard.

I have this vague memory of us doing something called Slam Books. I forget exactly what this was so I looked it up on the computer. One site said that it was questions written like what’s your favorite color and you passed them around but another said that mean things about people were written in it; I know darn well it was not the latter.

I still have my 2 friendship pins and the pair of 1928 earrings from Cindy; she started my love of that jewelry brand. We loved watching the” Pink Panther” cartoon with them. Jessica started calling him the Pink Piddler which we all thought was so funny back then.

We only visited them in PA twice, or maybe it was 3 times. I wish that it had been more; we always had such good times together. Dad didn’t really like doing much of anything outside of his own family though and he seemed to want us to be the same way. We didn’t get to see mom’s side of the family much either.

I loved trading stickers with them; I still have my sticker books. I did this with Carolyn, another friend that I had for only a couple of years in the late 90s and now do so with my friend/little sister Sharon. This may seem a bit childish but we don’t care

Once Cindy went to college our friendship was coming towards the end. The same thing happened with Kathy who always seemed very disappointed that Mike and I did not go to college. Well, we’ve done classes at the community college but never finished this. He had more credits than I do.

Our parents were good friends with Kathy’s parents; our Dads even went to the Indy 500 race in the 1960s- mid? We had fun going down the shore with them, esp. Wildwood. One time we played miniature golf on the roof top of a hotel on the boardwalk and Mike hit the ball off of it.

We went to a jewelry store where you could pick oysters out of a tank. I got double pearls twice there and also once in AC. I had two rings and a pair of earring made out of them. Unfortunately, I lost the earrings in the early 90s.

We always stayed at the Pulaski Motel which was a couple of blocks away from the boardwalk. Sometimes they’d come we us on day trips to other Jersey shore destinations- Seaside, Keansburg and Long Branch.

4^th of Julys were always celebrated at their house- pool/barbeque party and fireworks in a nearby park. Sometimes we would celebrate New Year’s Eve at either their house or ours. Of course,” Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve” would be on but I’d only watch the countdown part.

Sometimes we’d hang out with her friends Dana and Ginny- they all went to Elizabeth High School. They came over to our house a few times; once we watched a movie that we had rented- Evil Dead. We played card games often, like a very long one called Shanghai that another family friend taught us. The rules are long so we have them written on index cards.

She was good at that game and others like she was at everything else – video games, cake decorating, cooking, piano, drawing and sports like tennis and bowling. She tried teaching me how to do the latter 2 but I suck at everything.

These happy memories are making me sad which is ridiculous. I have many more but I better come back to the present and face the fact that over the past 20 years I’ve done a shitty job in the relationships department.

Boyfriends were mainly my friends except for Lynn. Am I even capable of overcoming the social anxiety and somehow finding friends and activities that will bring joy to my life? Yes, I have my Sharon but I do need to interact with people outside of the computer world too.

I feel like I belong on the Island of Misfit Toys like in” Rudolph”; where could a freak like me ever possibly fit in?